1. Past the Peak? Or Just Getting Started? What’s Powering STR Growth Across Europe

In this opening keynote, AirDNA’s Chief Economist Jamie Lane breaks down the macro trends driving short-term rental performance across Europe.

From the rise of lesser-traveled destinations and extended shoulder seasons to shifts in traveler origin, booking behavior, and regulatory pressure, Jamie will help you connect the dots between global economic signals and the realities operators face on the ground.

Backed by a comprehensive analysis of industry performance, this session reveals where demand is accelerating, how guest behavior is shifting, and what top operators are doing differently today.

Jamie will share practical ways to leverage data to anticipate market changes, navigate new policies, and demonstrate the value of STRs in an increasingly competitive hospitality landscape.
Whether you’re investing, managing, or scaling, this is the market briefing you need to make the right moves in 2025 and beyond.

Key Takeaways:

  • Identify the macroeconomic forces shaping demand across European STR and other markets.

  • Recognize shifts in traveler origin, booking behavior, and seasonality.

  • Learn how to leverage data to anticipate regulatory and market changes.

  • Practical steps for investors, managers, and operators to stay ahead in 2025 and beyond.

2. Behind the Booking: A Candid Conversation with the OTAs on Strategy, Trends and What’s Next

What’s top of mind for the platforms powering your bookings? Hear directly from leaders at Vrbo, Booking.com, and Airbnb as they share key insights from the first half of the year, discuss evolving guest expectations, and highlight the trends shaping the future of vacation rentals. Walk away with actionable tips to strengthen your listings, improve visibility, and drive better results.

Key Takeaways:

  • Understand current OTA strategies and evolving guest expectations.

  • Discover upcoming platform trends and their impact on operators.

  • Actionable insights to strengthen listings, boost visibility, and drive results.

3. Unlocking Growth: A Conversation with the Industry’s Hidden Influencer

In the vacation rental world, we talk endlessly about guests, data, tech stacks, and smooth operations—but there’s one voice we rarely hear, one perspective whose satisfaction and loyalty can make or break your entire business…

In this first-of-its-kind, live, unscripted session, we’ll flip the script and listen directly to a viewpoint that’s often overlooked—yet absolutely crucial. What truly builds trust? What transforms a short-term agreement into a long-lasting collaboration? And how can property managers create stronger, more sustainable relationships that drive growth?

Get ready for a candid, thought-provoking conversation that may challenge your assumptions—and deliver actionable insights to expand your portfolio and reinforce the foundations of your business.

Key Takeaways:

  • Hear directly from a rarely considered but crucial stakeholder.

  • Learn what truly builds trust and long-term collaboration.

  • Practical ways to reinforce relationships that grow your portfolio.

4. Between Control and Freedom: Understanding the New Rules of Airbnb, Booking.com & Vrbo

For property managers, platforms can feel like powerful gatekeepers. For platforms, balancing innovation, quality, and scale means making hard choices that don’t always land well in the field. This session bridges those perspectives. By cutting through noise and emotion, it helps managers understand why OTAs act the way they do, what freedoms are still available, and how to engage constructively with the very platforms that drive their business.

Hosts and managers often see platforms tightening controls: stricter policies, communication limits, new defaults that change how you operate. At the same time, these very platforms are rolling out new freedoms and tools — from direct integrations with third-party pricing systems like PriceLabs, to upsell options and expanded services.

This session unpacks that balance between control and freedom. We’ll explore the latest moves from Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo not through the lens of blame, but by asking: why are platforms making these decisions? The reality is that global OTAs need to enforce consistency, safeguard quality, and work at scale — challenges that sometimes create tension for managers on the ground. Add to that the fact that large organizations have different teams driving different priorities, and it’s no wonder policies can seem contradictory or confusing.

By understanding the strategic logic behind platform changes, property managers can respond more effectively. Instead of just reacting to updates, you can anticipate why they’re happening, identify where you still have control, and adapt your approach.

Key Takeaways

Participants will walk away with:

  • A candid, interactive sense of how peers feel about recent OTA changes.
  • A clear explanation of the strategic motivations behind policies — from scaling consistency to cross-department challenges inside big platforms.
  • Practical examples of where freedom still exists, such as using third-party pricing tools (e.g. PriceLabs integrations with Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo).
  • Frameworks for constructive engagement: how to read updates, assign someone on your team to track them, and ask the right questions.
  • A mindset shift: from frustration to strategic adaptation.

5. Growing Your Inventory: How Leading Managers Win More Homes

Vacation rental managers don’t grow unless they add more homes. Adding just one new property is like adding 100 guest bookings. Simply put: inventory is the ultimate growth lever, with a 3–6x greater ROI than nearly any other tactic.

This panel will uncover creative, practical, and proven ways professional managers are successfully growing their inventory today. Attendees will hear directly from some of the fastest-growing companies in the space, walking away with actionable strategies they can apply in their own markets, no matter the size or region.

Why This Panel Will Stand Out

  • Highly actionable: Attendees will leave with concrete ideas they can implement immediately
  • Internationally relevant: Strategies that work in all markets
  • Fresh perspective: We’ll go beyond the standard inventory growth talking points
  • New voices on stage: We’ll shine a spotlight on operators who are doing great work but don’t usually get the mic—

6. 🔥 Beyond the Backlash: Strategies to Defend and Grow Your Short-Term Rental Business in a Hostile Climate

In recent years, short-term rentals have become a favorite target of politicians, media, influencing and shaping public opinion heavily. A carefully crafted narrative portrays STRs as a threat to housing, communities, and social equity—fueling a surge of increasingly complex, fragmented, and often restrictive regulations at national, regional, and local levels.

In this session, we’ll unpack the key challenges property managers and hosts are facing in today’s regulatory jungle and examine the real impact of these pressures on local markets and communities. Most importantly, we’ll share practical strategies to defend your business, assert the legitimacy of your role in the tourism and housing ecosystem, and continue to grow despite the backlash.

Key Takeaways:

  • Recognize the main political, media, and social narratives affecting STRs.

  • Understand the regulatory challenges at local, regional, and national levels.

  • Practical defense strategies to protect and legitimize your business.

  • Growth tactics to thrive despite restrictive environments.

7. Robin Clifford’s, Dale of the Unexpected – A VRWS exclusive

From one property to a portfolio of over 1,500, Dale Smith has grown Host & Stay into one of the UK’s fastest-scaling property management businesses. Along the way he’s hired a 400-strong team, raised £12m, and navigated the highs and lows of rapid growth. In this session, Dale will share the good, the bad, and the ugly of scaling — with practical takeaways on revenue management, technology adoption, and how AI can transform efficiency for property managers.

Key Takeaways:

  • Lessons from scaling from 1 property to 1,500+ under management.

  • Practical advice on technology adoption and revenue management.

  • Insights into using AI to boost efficiency and streamline operations.

  • Honest reflection on the challenges and wins of rapid growth.

8. The Data Behind the Stay: Short-Term Rental Trends Shaping 2025

As the global short-term rental market continues to evolve, 2025 revealed important shifts in occupancy, pricing, and revenue, alongside changing traveler behavior and booking patterns. This session explores the latest global trends, highlighting the key takeaways from the past year and how the industry can apply these lessons to plan for sustainable, long-term success.

Key Takeaways:

  • Understand the biggest shifts in occupancy, pricing, and revenue in 2025.

  • Learn how traveler behaviors and booking patterns are evolving.

  • Apply global data trends to strengthen long-term planning.

  • Build strategies for sustainable growth and resilience.

9. Price Smart, Look Sharp: Optimizing Listings for the Modern Guest

In the competitive world of short-term rentals, going beyond just dynamic pricing is the key to outperforming the competition. Today’s savvy guests aren’t just shopping by price; they’re drawn to listings that feel curated, credible, and compelling.

In this session, we’ll explore how operators can combine smart pricing strategies with elevated listing optimization to stand out in crowded marketplaces. From photo quality to persuasive copy, amenity positioning to guest-centric language, you’ll learn what it really takes to convert browsers into bookers.

Whether you’re a seasoned revenue manager or a growing host looking to scale, you’ll leave with a tactical blueprint for maximizing both visibility and value through revenue management techniques.

Attendees will learn:

  • How to understand the mindset of the modern guest

  • The best ways to test and optimize digital marketing to drive direct bookings and higher-margin revenue

  • How to blend automation with manual efforts for a more strategic, high-performance revenue approach

  • Real-world examples of property managers using hands-on revenue tactics to outperform their competition

  • How to combine pricing and presentation to influence guest booking behavior

10. What to Make of Market Data

In this session John deRoulet, Head of RM Education at Wheelhouse will dive into how Revenue Managers and Property Managers can [and should!] be utilizing market data in their organization. We will start with the basics outlining the best practices and fundamentals of finding and using market data. We will then dive into specific processes where market data can be utilized to guide strategy, assess performance and communicate to owners and stakeholders in the organisation.

Market data often starts in revenue management but there will be pieces here for every part of the organization to take away and apply furthering understanding of the business and helping to explain why pricing and strategy is being set the way it is.

Key Takeaways:

  • Best practices for integrating market data into revenue strategy.

  • Fundamentals of analyzing and applying data insights.

  • Tools and techniques to make data actionable for your team.

  • How to avoid common pitfalls and focus on metrics that matter.

11. Has AI Seduced Our Guests? Understanding the Real Impact of AI in Guest Communication

AI is no longer a distant trend—it’s here, actively shaping how guests interact with property managers every single day. But are guests truly embracing it? And how is it changing the game for hospitality professionals?

In this eye-opening session, we’ll dive into the actual adoption curve of AI in guest communication, backed by real-world data, guest behavior insights, and message transcripts. You’ll discover what kinds of requests AI is already handling effectively, how guests perceive these AI-driven interactions, and what it means for your guest experience strategy.

Most importantly, we’ll explore a crucial shift: AI’s real power lies not just in responding, but in understanding. From intent detection to contextual empathy, this session will challenge assumptions and help you rethink how AI can elevate—not replace—human connection.

Whether you’re skeptical, curious, or already experimenting, this session will leave you with fresh perspectives and practical takeaways on what AI means for the future of hospitality communication.

12. The Future of Operations and Guest Experience in the Age of AI

This session explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping vacation rental management today, and what’s coming next.

Three leading SaaS CEOs will share insights on AI implementation, from automation to strategic differentiation.

The discussion moves beyond the hype to examine real-world applications: how AI drives efficiency, scales quality across portfolios, elevates guest satisfaction and is changing the way the world searches and books homes.

Panelists will address adoption barriers, the human-AI balance, and whether the industry is moving fast enough.

Property managers will leave with actionable intelligence on where AI delivers ROI now and how to prepare for the next wave of innovation, transforming competitive positioning in short-term rentals.

13. Every Stay Matters: Setting New Standards in the Vacation Rental Industry

In this fireside chat, Jessica Gillingham sits down with Travelstaytion CEO Jason Anastasinis to explore how standards, certification, and technology are transforming the professional vacation rental landscape. From the philosophy behind “Every Stay Matters” to the launch of Travelstaytion’s new quality assurance platform, the conversation unpacks how property managers can build trust, scale professionalism, and compete on quality.